The Cardinal

by Henry Morton Robinson

  A nun glided out of the shadows, carrying a sickroom utensil.

  “May I see the Sister in charge here?” asked Stephen.

  His priestly garb was passport enough. “You will find Sister Martha Annunziata on the second floor. Last door on the left.”

  The smell of deodorant became heavier as Stephen mounted the creaking stairway. He found himself tiptoeing down an uncarpeted corridor dimly lighted by a single taper burning before a plaster figure of the Virgin. At the last door he listened to a strange antiphon; one voice soothed, the other answered with weak retchings.

  Stephen rapped gently, then opened the door. A blasting stench of putrescence struck his nostrils. The odor of death came from a ghastly yellow-fleshed human being—whether man or woman, it was impossible to tell—propped up on pillows. The eyes were staring in pain, the lower jaw sagged uncontrollably as greenish bile poured across from its broken dam.

  Kneeling by the bedside, a gray-habited nun gazed with infinite tenderness at the horrible face on the pillow. In her hands she held an agate basin to catch the fetid trickle oozing from the death’s-head. The nun was not praying or exhorting. From her lips came a laving murmur, the sounds a mother might whisper to a feverish child. Only one voice in the world could speak like that.

  Lalage! Lalage Menton.

  The nun lifted wet-shining eyes to Stephen, recognized him, and made a little signal, part headshake, part finger to her lips. The gesture said: “In a moment it will be all over. Please wait outside.”

  Stephen was glad to close the door. In the drafty hallway, he knelt before the Virgin’s statue, and prayed for the soul that Lalage Menton was leading toward release.

  The end must have been peaceful. Candle in hand, Lalage came out of the sickroom and beckoned Stephen to follow her down the dim hallway. At the top of the stairway, she faced him tranquilly. In the taper-light he could see that Lalage’s face had lost the contour of youth and the radiance of its first beauty. Her hands were roughened by menial labor; at thirty-two the nut-brown maid was prematurely old. But her eyes were illuminated from within, and a trace of old mischievousness curved her lips.

  “I have been expecting your visit,” she said. “Scold me if you wish.”

  “I have no wish to scold you, Sister Martha.”

  “It was wrong to beg in your Diocese. Especially when I got your letter telling me to stop.”

  “We’ll go into that later, Sister. Tell me about the work you’re doing here. What kind of place is this—a hospital?”

  “No. Misericordia is a house of last breathings—a refuge for destitute incurables, who would otherwise die uncared for.”

  “But these are medical cases. Doctors, hospitals, should look after them.”

  Lalage’s work-roughened hand swept a row of closed doors. “Misericordia is filled with people who have been given up by doctors and hospitals. Our patients are dying of last-stage cancer and tuberculosis. Even morphine is powerless to ease their pain. Nothing can be done for their bodies. We try at the end to give them what comfort we can.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Not quite a year. We chose a bad time to start our work.”

  “Have you no regular source of income?”

  Sister Martha Annunziata shook her head in a proud negative. “Geraldines are always poor. The Mother House sends us all it can spare.”

  “Why did you not apply to me for assistance?”

  “By the rule of our Order we make no financial claims on the Diocese.” Lalage pinched a drop of melting wax from the candle’s edge. “We live on drippings, Your Excellency.”

  A Sister whom Stephen recognized as one of the nuns he had seen at the factory gates approached. Her shoes and the lower part of her habit were still wet from snow.

  “The throat case in Room Five is sinking, Mother Superior.”

  “I will come, Sister.” Lalage Menton turned to Stephen. “Is there anything more you wish to say to me?”

  “Yes.” Stephen firmed his voice. “I want you to stop begging in the Diocese of Hartfield. It is not fair to the workingmen.”

  He waited for the female plea, “What else can I do?” It did not come, and Stephen knew that Lalage Menton intended to go on begging until she could find some surer source of income. To prevent this fearless, determined woman from committing the sin of disobedience, Stephen made a voluntary offer of assistance.

  “I shall make a financial contribution to your work here. As of today, Misericordia House will be allotted five hundred dollars monthly from diocesan funds.”

  “That is most generous, Your Excellency.” Faint suggestions of a tease were in Lalage’s voice. “You won’t chop down our pine trees, will you?”

  Stephen smiled. “No, that won’t be necessary. But I must receive regular reports covering your expenditures, the number of patients admitted, and the treatment they receive. Is this quite clear, Sister?”

  “Yes, Your Excellency.”

  They were walking down the creaky stairs. “When money eases up a little,” continued Stephen, “we must think of making a few repairs. This place is a barracks, and a drafty one at that. I shall send one of my assistants out to inspect it in detail—foundations, furnace, plumbing, roof, everything.” In trying to be severe, Stephen found himself imitating Glennon’s executive voice and manner. “Simple piety isn’t enough, Sister. I must consider the physical well-being of the religious establishments within my Diocese.”

  “Of course, Your Excellency.” Sister Martha Annunziata darted off to lay her ear against a door, the better to interpret the whimpering moans within.

  Watching her come toward him again, the candle flame shielded with her hand, Stephen softened his official demeanor.

  “Are you happy in your work here?”

  “It is the work I was born to do,” she said simply.

  Echoes of Lalage’s reply accompanied Stephen all the way back to Hartfield. She had answered his question as Theresa or Francis might have answered it. In fact, everything that Lalage Menton had ever said, everything she had ever done, was a perfect manifestation of the thing she was. All needy creatures claimed her, and in making a dedicated response to their needs, she had found the perfect fulfillment of her being.

  AS THE DEPRESSION DEEPENED, Stephen’s parish visitations became grim affairs. Every church had its local difficulties; the Bishop’s antechamber swarmed with rectors and heads of religious orders begging for outright aid or for a reduction of the Cathedral tax expected of them. Stephen went over their parish accounts in detail, suggesting economies, short cuts, a trimming of sails to the economic hurricane. Yet, quite early in the depression, the Bishop of Hartfield had discovered that many economies were double-edged. If, for example, you discontinued building a school or called a halt to repairs, more men were thrown out of work. The wisest course (it took courage as well as wisdom) was to make prudent expenditures, dig into your cash reserves, and hope that they would hold out.

  Meanwhile from the White House came an amazing series of pronouncements, denying at first that disaster had befallen the country, then later switching to a dogged reiteration that the crisis had passed. “There is nothing in the situation to be disturbed about”; “The crisis will be over in sixty days”; “Prosperity is just around the corner.” Despite these bland proclamations, the country sank deeper into the quagmire until at last the White House bulletin was greeted with derisive laughter.

  Stephen marveled in those dark days that the great mass of the people, abandoned by their political leaders, did not rise in some violent outburst of fury. That they remained calm and well disciplined under the withering fire of disaster was a reassuring sign of the basic stability of the American character.

  AT THE PEAK of his career, and at a time when his high office required the utmost expenditure of physical and nervous energy, Stephen Fermoyle was stricken by a crippling disease.

  A sharp bout of pneumonia, induced by the strain of chronic fatigue, sent him
to bed early in October, 1930. The good medical care of Dr. Howard Gavigan, plus the prayers of Stephen’s congregation, were apparently speeding the patient to uneventful recovery. After two weeks, he was able to walk about his room; already he had begun to plague Dr. Gavigan with the restless convalescent’s question: “When can I get back to work?”

  “You’ll be able to celebrate Mass on All Saints’ Day,” promised the doctor. “Be grateful for the cure our Lord has worked upon you, and don’t test His patience or mine by any more questions.”

  Then, on the morning of All Saints’ Day, Stephen noticed a curious swelling of his right leg—a distension so marked that he could not tie his shoe. “I’ll say nothing about it, try to walk it off,” he resolved, and managed to struggle through High Mass without revealing the condition of his leg to anyone. After lunch he was glad to get back into bed. The next day his leg was swollen to the knee. Alarmed, he called in Dr. Gavigan.

  The old physician made a thorough examination of the swollen limb. He pressed the calf, put his fingers under the arch of Stephen’s knee, and asked humorously: “Been in any jungles lately?”

  “No.”

  “Then it’s probably not Wuchereria bancrofti”

  “What are they?”

  “The parasites that cause elephantiasis.” Dr. Gavigan was off on another diagnostic tack. This time he applied a stethoscope to Stephen’s heart, listened long, and brought his grizzled head up reassuringly. “Well, it’s certainly not cardiac, Your Excellency.”

  “That’s fine. It’s not my heart, and it’s not elephantiasis. What is it?”

  “I’ll be asking the questions today, Bishop. Anyone else in your family have trouble with their legs?”

  “My father had varicose veins.”

  Dr. Gavigan went into a ponder, and came out on the tentative side. “The Mayo Brothers might call it one thing,” he said, “and Elberfeld’s Calculating Horses might call it another. Meanwhile, I’ll call it phlebitis.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  Dr. Gavigan began putting away his stethoscope. “It’s a common thing after pneumonia. No one ever died of it.”

  “But it might prevent a man from crossing the street? Is that what you’re trying to say, Doctor?”

  “Now don’t start painting the devil on the wall. We’ll keep you off your feet for a couple of weeks, and see what happens.”

  “A couple of weeks! That’s impossible! I’ve got a Community Chest drive, an ordination, two confirmations”—Stephen flung out his hand impatiently—“and pecks of other business.”

  “They can wait. Bed rest is nature’s best remedy.”

  And bed rest it was, for two trying weeks. Dr. Gavigan bandaged the swollen leg, kept it elevated, and put his patient on a bland diet. Contemptuous of slow treatment, the swelling increased; Stephen’s leg was now enormous; it throbbed painfully and would not sustain his weight when he attempted to walk.

  “I think we ought to call in a specialist,” admitted Dr. Gavigan finally. “A consultation is indicated here.”

  “Get Dr. John Byrne,” said Stephen. “He’s specialist enough for me.”

  John Byrne’s examination included laboratory tests of Stephen’s blood, urine, and a specimen of fluid drained from his swollen leg. Then, laboratory reports in hand, John Byrne sat down beside Stephen’s bed.

  “My diagnosis agrees with Dr. Gavigan’s, Steve. You’ve got phlebitis—that is, an inflammation of the veins deep in your leg. The picture is complicated by a lymphatic involvement”—he started to explain what the involvement was when Stephen interrupted with a taut question.

  “Is it curable?”

  Dr. Byrne was strangely evasive. “Very little is known about lymphatic disorders. Cannon and Drinker are doing experimental work on the subject at Harvard. Sooner or later, something may come of it.”

  “Meanwhile my leg will continue to look and feel like a sausage. Is that the story?”

  “The acute phase may pass. Spontaneous cures have been reported.” John Byrne was encouraging. “We’ll try everything: arsenicals, drainage, heat …”

  “And more bed rest.” Stephen was disconsolate.

  “That’s about all we can do. You must have patience, Steve.”

  Patience! Medicine easiest to prescribe, hardest to take. Patience! The calm enduring of catastrophe or pain. Patience! One of the moral virtues—a special gift of the Holy Ghost.

  “I’ll try,” promised Stephen.

  LIKE most men who have enjoyed the blessing of health all their lives, Stephen was a poor patient. Flat on his back, legs propped up on pillows, he passed through irritability to bitterness, through bitterness to desperation. For the first month he felt like a torture victim strapped to the floor of a belfry while monstrous chimes tolled “doom, doom” above his head.

  Meanwhile diocesan business accumulated—and lapsed. Some details he handled from bed, some he delegated to assistants, but the more important duties—such as confirmations and parish inspections—demanded the Bishop’s physical presence. Stephen put whip and spur to his aides, all of whom responded with selfless devotion. Vicar-General Cannell strained the seams of his cassock to accomplish tasks that Stephen laid upon him; Mark Drury (a much-humbled man since the Wall Street crash) flogged both himself and his subordinates over the Chancery hurdles. Still, neither the Vicar-General nor the Chancellor possessed the canonical authority to administer confirmation or ordain new priests. Amby Cannell solved this problem by tracking down a retired missionary bishop, the Most Reverend Fabian Coxe, D.D., living with his sister on the outskirts of New Haven. Rickety and aging though he was, Bishop Coxe forgot his own infirmities and traveled about the Diocese, confirming and ordaining in Stephen’s stead.

  Unexpected strength developed in Owen Starkey, Stephen’s stripling secretary. To the handling of an enormous correspondence and an ability to sift the essential grain from mountains of chaff, Father Starkey added various roving assignments. He became a mobile foreman in charge of building projects, the upkeep of cemeteries, and the inspection of the model machine shops that Stephen had established before his illness. Only a youthful diffidence in dealing with older clerics kept Father Starkey from being the perfect lieutenant.

  “It’s hard for me to crack down on men who were celebrating Mass before I was born,” he confessed to Stephen. “Sometimes I feel like a buck private trying to tell a top sergeant how to lace his shoes.”

  The mention of shoelaces brought a rueful groan from Stephen. Suddenly, shoes became the most beautiful things in the world; would he ever again enjoy the almost sacramental privilege of wearing them? Grumble and grin mingled in his warning to Owen Starkey: “The next man who mentions shoelaces around here will have to eat his own, boiled.” The Bishop’s tone softened: “Don’t let these top-sergeant characters frighten you, Ownie. Just remember that you’re my auxiliary legs, and step out accordingly.”

  By means of auxiliary legs, hands, and eyes Stephen managed to keep the diocesan machinery rolling. He could not, however, do much about the depression. Like a merciless glacier it ground onward, crushing factories, banks, parishes, and human beings to economic flinders. Sources of private charity dried up, parishes plunged deeper into deficit; the diocesan treasury sank lower, and the Bishop of Hartfield lay in bed with a heavy leg and still heavier heart.

  Visitors came—friends and family—each bearing some leaf of comfort to lay on Stephen’s coverlet. Glennon urged a trip to the Mayo Clinic for the best obtainable diagnosis and treatment. Corny Deegan drove down from Boston with two characteristic gifts: a carton of S. S. Pierce’s tinned brown bread and a powder-blue check for five thousand dollars. “Something for church mice to nibble on,” he said cryptically, folding the check between the pages of Stephen’s breviary. Bernie Fermoyle lugged in the newest thing in radio: a six-tube affair bristling with knobs and dials. “If you want to hear me, just turn this to six-sixty every night at eight o’clock. It’s the Jelo-Pud Hour, bringing you th
e jiffy dessert with the extra tremble.” Every evening, thereafter, Bernie’s chamois voice rubbed away some part of the day’s tarnish.

  These and many other visitors—Alfeo Quarenghi, Paul Ireton, and Jeremy Splaine among them—were beacons that helped light Stephen’s passage across seas of illness. Their friendship was immeasurably sweet, a temporary prop to his loneliness, a corporal proof of love. Gradually, however, Stephen began to realize that mortal friends, with all their sustaining strength, could not float him over the sunken ledges of despondency. Only one Friend could do that. And where was that Friend now? Once in a midnight hour of querulous misery, Stephen cried out: “Deus meus, Deus mens, ut quid dereliquisti me?” (Lord, Lord, why hast Thou forsaken me?) To his anguished cry no answer came. God’s silence was stony, His face was turned away.

  For five bedridden months Stephen’s condition did not change. John Byrne came down from Boston every week to drain off accumulated fluids or try an experimental drug. His skill and medicines were unavailing; Stephen’s leg remained a swollen useless thing suspended in a leather harness. A fever hung on, too. Three times a day the waxen fingers of Sister Frances Veronica placed a thermometer between Stephen’s lips, then after a tranquil reading of the mercury (how maddeningly composed the woman was!) she would make either a spike or a trough on her patient’s chart. The spike meant 100.2; the trough 99.4—a monotonous graph indicating the presence of a chronic low-grade infection that resisted both diagnosis and treatment.

  One day while John Byrne was trying out a new heat lamp, Stephen asked him bluntly:

  “Do you think I’ll ever be able to walk again, John?”

  “‘Ever’ is a vague word. Suppose I said ‘no.’ How would that affect the situation?”

  “I’d know what action to take about the Diocese. I could resign … let a well man take over the job. It’s not fair to serve six hundred thousand Catholics from bed.”

  “Have you had any complaints about your administration?”

  “No. Everyone is so—touchingly loyal.”

  John Byrne brought the heat lamp closer to Stephen’s leg. “Then why don’t you develop a little loyalty yourself?” he asked in his quiet way.